I jumped to my feet and searched the shadows of the room, trying to see what made the noise.
“Here.”
I spun around.
A thin shaft of light took new form as someone stepped forward into its soft beam.
A dusky strand of hair. A cheekbone. His lips.
I couldn’t move. I stared at him, all I had ever wanted and all I had ever run from locked in the same room with me.
“Prince Rafferty,” I finally whispered. It was only a name, but its sound was hard, foreign, and distasteful in my mouth. Prince Jaxon Tyrus Rafferty.
He shook his head. “Lia…”
His voice shivered through my skin. Everything I had hung on to across thousands of miles shifted inside me. All the weeks. The days. Him. A farmer, now turned prince—and a very clever liar. I couldn’t quite grasp it all. My thoughts were water slipping through my fingers.
He stepped forward, the beam of light shifting to his shoulders, but I had already seen his face, the guilt. “Lia, I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, Prince Rafferty. You have no idea what I’m thinking. I’m not even sure what I’m thinking.” All I knew was that even now, as I shivered with doubt, my blood ran hot, spiking with every word and glance from him, the same feelings swirling in my belly as when we were in Terravin, as if nothing had changed. I wanted him desperately and completely.
He stepped forward, and the space between us suddenly vanished, the heat of his chest meeting mine, his arms strong around me, his lips warm and soft, every bit as sweet as I remembered. I soaked him in, relieved, thankful—angry. A farmer’s lips, a prince’s lips—a stranger’s lips. The one true thing I thought I had was gone.
I pressed closer to him, telling myself that a few lies compared to everything else didn’t matter. He had risked his life coming here for me. He was still at terrible risk. Neither of us might survive the night. But it was there, hard and ugly between us. He had lied. He had manipulated me. To what purpose? What game was he playing? Was he here for me or for Princess Arabella? I pushed away. Looked at him. Swung. The hard slap of my hand on his face rang through the room.
He reached up, rubbing his cheek, turning his head to the side. “I have to admit, that wasn’t exactly the greeting I envisioned after all those miles of chasing you across the continent. Can we go back to the kissing part?”
“You lied to me.”
I saw his back stiffen, the posture, the prince, the person he really was. “I seem to recall it was a mutual endeavor.”
“But you knew who I was all along.”
“Lia—”
“Rafe, this may not seem important to you, but it’s terribly important to me. I ran from Civica because for once in my life, I wanted to be loved for who I was—not what I was and not because a piece of paper commanded it. I could be dead by the end of the day, but with my last dying breath, I need to know. Who did you really come here for?”
His bewildered expression turned to one of irritation. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No!” I said. “If I had truly been a tavern maid, would you still have come? What was my true worth to you? Would you have given me a second glance if you hadn’t known I was Princess Arabella?”
“Lia, that’s an impossible question. I only went to Terravin because—”
“I was a political embarrassment? A challenge? A curiosity?”
“Yes!” he snapped. “You were all those things! A challenge and an embarrassment! At first. But then—”
“What if you hadn’t found Princess Arabella at all? What if you’d only found me, a tavern maid named Lia?”
“Then I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be in Terravin kissing the most infuriating girl I ever laid my eyes on, and not even two kingdoms could tear me away.” He stepped closer and hesitantly cradled my face in his hands. “But the fact is, I came for you, Lia, no matter who or what you are, and I don’t care what mistakes I made or what mistakes you made. I’d make every single one again, if that was the only way to be with you.”
His eyes sparked with frustration. “I want to explain everything. I want to spend a lifetime with you making up for the lies I told, but right now we don’t have time. They could be back for either of us any minute. We have to get our stories straight and make our plans.”
A lifetime. My thoughts turned liquid, the warmth of the word lifetime flooding through me. The hopes and dreams that I had painfully pushed away surged once more. Of course, he was right. What was most important was to figure out what we were going to do. I couldn’t stand to watch him die too. The deaths of Walther and Greta and a whole company of men were already too much to bear.
“I have help coming,” he said, already moving on. “We just have to hold out until they get here.” He was confident, sure of himself the way a prince might be. Or a well-trained soldier. How had I not seen this side of him before? His troops were coming.
“How many?” I asked.
“Four.”
I felt my hopes rise. “Four thousand?”
His expression sobered. “No. Four.”
“You mean four hundred?”
He shook his head.
“Four? Total?” I repeated.
“Lia, I know how it sounds, but trust me, these four—they’re the best.”
My hope fell as quickly as it had sprung. Four hundred soldiers couldn’t get us out of here, much less four. I wasn’t able to hide my skepticism, and a weak laugh escaped my lips. I circled the small room, shaking my head. “We’re trapped here on this side of a raging river with thousands of people who hate us. What can four people do?”
“Six,” he corrected. “With you and me, there are six.” His voice was plaintive, and when he stepped toward me, he winced, holding his ribs.
“What happened?” I asked. “They’ve hurt you.”
“Just a little gift from the guards. They’re not fond of Dalbreck swine. They made sure I understood that. Several times.” He held his side, taking a slow shallow breath. “They’re only bruises. I’m all right.”
“No,” I said. “You’re obviously not.” I pushed away his hand and pulled up his shirt. Even in the dim light, I could see the purple bruises that covered his ribs. I recalculated the odds. Five against thousands. I dragged the stool over and made him sit, then ripped strips from my already shredded skirt. I carefully began wrapping his middle to stabilize his movement. I was reminded of the scars on Kaden’s back. These people were savages. “You shouldn’t have come, Rafe. This is my problem. I brought it on when I—”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Stop worrying. I’ve taken worse tumbles on my horse, and this is nothing compared to what you’ve been through.” He reached out and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Lia. They told me about your brother.”
The bitterness rolled up in my throat again. There were things I never thought would happen, much less have to witness. Watching my brother be slaughtered right before my eyes was the worst of them. I drew my hand away, wiping it on my tattered skirt. It felt wrong to have the warmth of Rafe’s hands on my fingertips when I spoke of Walther, who lay cold in the ground. “You mean they laughed about my brother. I listened to them on the road for five days, gloating over how easily they fell.”
“They said you buried them. All of them.”
I stared at the weak beams of light filtering through the slits, trying to see anything but Walther’s sightless eyes staring into the sky and my fingers closing them for the last time. “I wish you could have known him,” I said. “My brother was going to be a great king one day. He was kind and patient in all ways, and he believed in me the way no one else did. He—” I turned to face Rafe. “He rode with a company of thirty-two—the strongest, bravest soldiers of Morrighan. I watched every one of them die. They were outnumbered five to one. It was a massacre.”
The protective curtain I had drawn around myself was torn away, and sickening heat crawled over my skin. I smelled the sweat of their bodies. Pieces of bodies. I had gathered them all so nothing was left for the animals, then dropped to my knees thirty-three times to pray. My words spilled loose, bleeding from somewhere inside, thirty-three cries for mercy, thirty-three good-byes. And then the earth, soaked with their blood, swallowed them up, practiced, and they were gone. This was not the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
“Lia?”
I looked at Rafe. Tall and strong like my brother. Confident like my brother. He had only four coming. How much more could I face losing?
“Yes,” I answered. “I buried them all.”
He reached out and pulled me to his side. I sat on the straw next to him. “We can do this,” he said. “We just have to buy time until my men get here.”
“How long before your soldiers come?” I asked.
“A few days. Maybe more. It depends how far south they have to ride in order to cross the river. But I know they’ll be here as soon as they can. They’re the best, Lia. The best of Dalbreck soldiers. Two of them speak the language fluently. They’ll find their way in.”
I wanted to say that getting in wasn’t the problem. We had found our way in. The problem was getting out again. But I held my tongue and nodded, trying to appear encouraged. If his plan didn’t work, mine would. I had killed a horse this morning. Maybe by tonight I would kill another beast.
“There might be another way,” I said. “They have weapons in the Sanctum. They’d never miss one. I might be able to slip a knife beneath my skirt.”
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s too dangerous. If they—”
“Rafe, their leader is responsible for killing my brother, his wife, and a whole company of men. It’s only a matter of time before he goes back for more. He has to be—”
“His soldiers killed them, Lia. What good would killing one man do? You can’t take on a whole army with a single knife, especially in our positions. Right now our only goal is to get out of here alive.”
We were at odds. In my head, I knew he was right, but a deeper, darker part of me still hungered for more than escape.
He grabbed my arm, demanding an answer. “Do you hear me? You can’t do anyone any good if you’re dead. Be patient. My soldiers will come and then we’ll get out of this together.”
Me, patient, four soldiers. The words together were lunacy. But I conceded, because even without the four, Rafe and I needed each other, and that was what mattered right now. We sat on the mattress of straw and made our plans, what we would tell them, what we wouldn’t, and the deceptions we would have to construct until help arrived. An alliance at last—the one our fathers had tried to procure all along. I told him everything I already knew of the Komizar, the Sanctum, and the halls they had dragged me through. Every detail could be important.
“Be careful. Watch your words,” I said. “Even your movements. He misses nothing. He’s sharp-eyed even when he appears otherwise.”
There were some things I held back. Rafe’s plans were metal and flesh, floor and fist, all things solid. Mine were things unseen, fever and chill, blood and justice, the things that crouched low in my gut.
In the middle of whispering our plans, he paused suddenly and reached out, his thumb gently tracing a line across the crest of my cheek. “I was afraid—” He swallowed and looked down, clearing his throat. His jaw twitched, and I thought I would break watching him. When he looked back at me, his eyes crackled with anger. “I know what burns in you, Lia. They’ll pay for this. All of it. I promise. One day they’ll pay.”
But I knew what he meant. That Kaden would pay.
We heard footsteps approaching and quickly moved apart. He looked at me, the deep blue ice of his eyes cutting through the shadows. “Lia, I know your feelings about me may have changed. I deceived you. I’m not the farmer I claimed to be, but I hope I can make you fall in love with me again, this time as a prince, one day at a time. We’ve had a terrible start—it doesn’t mean we can’t have a better ending.”
I stared at him, his gaze swallowing me whole, and I opened my mouth to speak, but every word still swam in my head. Fall in love with me again … this time as a prince.
The door banged open, and two guards came in. “You,” they said, pointing to me, and I barely had time to get to my feet before they dragged me away.